The final day of the 2016 USA Weightlifting (USAW) American Open kicked off right where Saturday night ended. Competing in the 94KG session, Colin Burns made three successful lifts in the snatch portion of the competition to set a new American Record of 173KG (381lb).
Watch below, video courtesy of @juggernaughttraining.
Burns is a former USAW Olympic Training Center resident athlete, who has since moved to Southern California and trains and works for Juggernaut Training, under the coaching of Max Aita and Chad Wesley Smith. At 33 years old, Burns is one of the oldest lifters to ever hold an American Weightlifting record, which just makes his feat of strength that much more appreciated and remarkable.
Burns, who has twice before held the American Record in the snatch at 94KG, last set the record at the 2014 World Weightlifting Championships in Almaty, Kazakhstan, in November of that year. Since then it has been broken by Jared Fleming at the 2015 USAW National Championships and re-set by Norik Vardanian at the 2016 USAW National Championships.
It looks like Burns could hold this record for the foreseeable future. With Fleming and Vardanian both rehabbing from injury, it is a guessing game if they will be back at the national or international level in 2017. D’Angelo Osorio appears to have moved on up to the 105KG category. Olympian Kendrick Farris has a life time PR of 166KG (365lb) – however, he has been considered a clean & jerk specialist throughout his career. It also is not known if or when he will make a return to the platform after his competition in Rio this past summer.
20 year old Nathan Damron — lifting in the 94kg category — was successful with 160KG (352lb) to win the silver medal behind Burns, setting a new Junior American snatch record in the process. He has been seen on Instagram with a 300KG back squat, and +200KG clean & jerks. While he has a lot of potential to set records in the future, it appears he still needs time to develop before he will be attempting the weights of Burns, at least in the snatch.
Featured image: @juggernauttraining
